


Risky Business

by xikra1648



Series: Too Many Ideas, Not Enough Notebooks [3]
Category: DC Animated Universe (Timmverse), DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe, But not in the real world, Explicit Language, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Most characters are only mentioned, Pre-decided physical features due to biological familial relation to existing characters, Romance, They exist in the DCU, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, fictional countries, injuries, rating to be safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:29:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22190329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xikra1648/pseuds/xikra1648
Summary: Your position on the team, the work you did with and for the Justice League, it was all pretty risky.  You were, for all intents and purposes, a hero that doubled as a spy-for-hire.  Very specifically, a spy-for-hire that only worked for the Justice League...and didn't get paid.It was a risky job, one that very few outside Batman's extensive list of proteges could do, and not even all of them had enough training or experience to do it.Yet, none of that was as risky as acting on the breath-halting tension between you and the man you usually worked with in the field.
Relationships: Artemis Crock/Wally West, Dick Grayson/Reader, Kon-El | Conner Kent/M'gann M'orzz
Series: Too Many Ideas, Not Enough Notebooks [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1523705
Kudos: 42





	Risky Business

**Author's Note:**

> I blame Friends.
> 
> Basically, Monica and Chandler getting together got me hooked on the 'hooking up with the bffs little sister' trope, and throw in Dick's thing for redheads...I can't help myself.

# Risky Business

### Too Many Ideas, Not Enough Notebooks

The mission was a success, but it was going to be two days until someone could pick the two of you up. Considering the nature of the mission, it was more likely the League would send someone in with a Javelin to pick you up, instead of sending M’gann with the bioship. That was why you and Dick had been picked for the mission in the first place, neither of you were _officially_ part of the Justice League, and you were trained for things that the others…weren’t quite prepared for.

It’s not like the others couldn’t handle danger, but this assignment was… _different._

It was more like spy work, detective work, _wet work._

Artemis would have been able to pull herself together and make it work, but she’d been Kid Flash’s partner for so long, and that was _before_ she and Wally retired. The others…there was a fuzzy line between the fucked up shit you all saw as part of the team, and the shit you and Dick dealt with on a _regular_ basis. That fuzzy line that kept the others from going into a country that strictly banned Justice League activity, that kept them from weeks or _months_ of undercover work, manipulating people and lying their way to to a secure terminal to _steal_ classified information that would either confirm or deny Batman’s suspicions, and get caught between a literal _army_ and the border crossing to a country under the Justice League’s protection. That sort of fuzzy line that stood between what the _team_ did, and actual _spy_ work.

Well, for you it was spy work, for Dick it was _detective_ work, but he wasn’t the only member of the bat-clan in denial about being closer to _spies_ than _detectives._

It was hard to describe how _you_ ended up on the League’s short list of people they’d call for more… _questionable_ missions, investigations, things like that. It started out as helping Barry and your brother, Wally, then tumbled into getting training to help out the team, and then things… _spiraled._ It was…hard to explain. You’d been so _stupid_ to think that your close relations with multiple heroes would keep you safe…

“You’re better at this than I am,” Dick brought you out of your thoughts, your mind wandering as your gray-green eyes and deft hands focused on patching his wounds while Dick’s stable but calloused and stronger hands occasionally pressed or tugged a bit too hard as he patched you up. The mission was always going to end in a firefight, no matter how well it went, but people with pale complexions tend to stand out in the Middle Eastern country of Bialya, and that was nothing to say of your **West Family Brand Red Hair TM** that was practically a neon sign growing out of your head. You could have dyed it, but instead decided to _lean into_ the fact you stuck out, and it worked, up until you and Dick had to make a mad dash to the safehouse to grab what you could while the Bialyan special forces chased after you, guns firing as the two of you dove out the windows.

Turned out, it was a much longer drive to Qurac than you thought, and the Bialyans managed to get enough shots in that the car came to a crash. That, then, started a fight with you and Dick cornered, which then led to the two of you hijacking one of the Bialyan special forces trucks and driving that to the Qurac border. With the ongoing hostilities between the countries, that nearly ended in disaster, one which was only averted because you ditched that car and started _sprinting_ to the border, still suited up as _Nightwing_ and _Nightingale_ : heroes that worked _with_ the Justice League _on occasion_ , but were – importantly – _not_ actually associated with the Justice League.

The two of you had to vanish, accepting any assistance from the Quracan government – while it was offered – would only reignite an actual _war_ between the two countries, and Qurac would have to defend against accusations they’d hired the two of you to spy on Bialya. So, you disappeared, changed back into civvies, and paid for a shitty motel room with cash, and not arguing when the woman at the counter assumed you were a couple. A man and a woman in a relationship traveling together garnered less attention than a man and a woman that were uninvolved traveling together.

“I’m better than you at a _lot_ of things,” you shot back with a smirk, eyes shifting up to meet Dick’s blue eyes for a second before shifting back to focus on your work. It was hardly the first mission like this you’d been on with Dick. The League didn’t have a lot of people they could trust with things like this, and there were even less people on that list that could – or _would_ – work together. There weren’t that many people in the _hero_ business that could… _bend_ like the two of you could, cross lines most wouldn’t cross, make peace with less than… _saintly_ decisions, some of which you were pretty sure would keep even _Batman_ up at…whenever he slept.

“That’s fair,” Dick admitted with a nod, briefly raising his brow in admittance before wincing as the bruise spanning his right temple to his cheekbone began to throb again, along with the pull of the adhesive from the bandage covering the spot that had been skinned during the crash. You rolled your eyes, a smile growing on your lips as you gently shook your head in amusement, tilting your head a bit to get a better look at what you were doing. It was a lucky slice with a knife, Dick’s _‘high risk/high reward’_ method of fighting could bight him in the ass sometimes, and while it was shallow it still spanned from his left shoulder, over his collarbone, and half-way across his pec. It bled a lot too, which concerned you, but you’d had to clean it and wait for the bleeding to stop before you could properly stitch it up. You felt hip pat the side of your left thigh, where he’d been treating a nasty cut you’d gotten wrestling around in the truck when you were clearing it out to steal it. You lifted your leg up, bending it at the knee and wincing as you pulled at the sore muscles there, giving him enough room to wrap the gauze around your leg.

You’d done this before, with Dick, and were familiar with the close proximity sometimes required to patch each other up. This time, the two of you made use of the couch along the wall, sitting sideways with you between his legs, one of his feet planted on the floor and both your legs draped over his. It was just like every other time you’d had to patch each other up, all the way down to the two of you stripping down to your underwear, your fingers gently dancing across his skin as you stitched him up and him fussing with your thick red hair and pinning it back so he could clean and bandage the small cut by your eye. It was all pretty routine, even as you finished with the patch job on his chest and looked up to make sure the adhesive by his eye was still in place.

Your nose brushed his, for the first time…ever, and then you realized just how close the two of you were. Breaths mingled, your eyes slid shut and you could still feel him giving you that…that _look_ with his _paradoxically_ warm blue eyes. Your hand was still placed over the bandage on his chest, and you could feel his heartbeat, his hand on the back of your shoulder warm and strong as he held you up.

“We should get some sleep, been a long few weeks,” Dick spoke softly, making you realize just how heavy the quiet had become, “You can take the bed, I think if I try to get up I’ll trip.”

You didn’t quite believe him, but you took the opportunity to back away from the tense air, the looming weight of a risk you were too cautious to take, and Dick was too fearless to ignore. It wasn’t the first time the temptation had blanketed the two of you. It just…wasn’t a good idea, in any way. His best friend was your older brother, a total cliché that didn’t work out as well as Monica and Chandler made it look in _Friends_. You worked together, a _lot_ , and there were a lot of times you didn’t have the rest of the team there with you to cushion the stress of working with a significant other in such a high-stress life-or-death environment. The chances of things failing were way too high and…

You just couldn’t take that risk.

Not with your best friend.


End file.
